Sun on Fire

by Viktor Arnar Ingolfsson

  Birkir asked, “Maybe he said all this about the sheriff specifically to escape blame?”

  Helgi replied, “No. Fabían had no idea what was in the official report, nor what people in general thought about this. He simply told his story when his mental health had improved enough for him to be able to do so. It didn’t matter to him what other people thought. He would never have made this story up. His drawing of the sheriff was as accurate as a photograph, even down to the coat of arms on the buttons of his uniform. And he had never seen this guy, not before and not since. Fabían just wanted to stay at home and do his thing. He never went into Hvolsvöllur with us, and the sheriff never visited the house until that evening.”

  Birkir shrugged. “OK, let’s assume his story is true.”

  “It is true. I have no doubt Arngrímur Esjar is guilty of Sun’s death. But we all saw there was no hope he would ever be brought to justice through the official legal system. Fabían was not a witness you could rely on in court, and then there was the question whether the statute of limitations meant we were too late. And even if we revealed the story, there was no guarantee anybody would believe it; there might even be a backlash against us. Our only hope was to get Arngrímur to tell the truth, and that’s what we decided to do. We kept track of where he was working, first Washington, then Bonn, and finally Berlin. We figured our only option was to grab him and get him to confess his part in the crime. In writing or on tape.”

  “Who is the ‘we’ in this context?”

  “It was me, Jón, Rakel, and Starkadur—Sun’s younger brother.”

  “What did you do?”

  “We made various plans over the years, all of which revolved around grabbing Arngrímur on arrival in Iceland. We waited and waited, but he never showed up. Starkadur knew a young woman who worked as a secretary in the Foreign Ministry, and he asked her to let him know if Arngrímur was coming to Iceland—told her he needed a clarification of some old record dating from the time Arngrímur was sheriff at Hvolsvöllur, a minor matter, no need to bother him in Berlin. He jogged the secretary’s memory on a regular basis, but the answer was always the same: Arngrímur Ingason is not expected in Iceland.”

  “So you decided to go to Berlin.”

  “Yes. Things just started happening all of a sudden. The embassy invited me to hold an exhibition in the Felleshus, and Jón received a German translation of his poems. The new ambassador in Berlin was a personal acquaintance, and through this friendship he arranged for the poems’ publication in Germany. Self-publication in disguise, actually, because Jón had to pay the costs himself. I’d previously met the ambassador’s wife at an art exhibition, and I sent a message to her that it would be a good idea to invite Jón to do a reading at the embassy in connection with his visit to the Frankfurt Book Fair. The second Sunday in October, just before the fair opened, would be the perfect day for it. I contacted the embassy to say I was coming to make preliminary arrangements for my exhibition and requested a meeting with Arngrímur Ingason that same Sunday. And Starkadur got his husband, David, to go with him to Berlin the same weekend to attend a well-known designer’s fashion show. The idea was that all three of us would be at the embassy on the same Sunday, and that we could easily corner Arngrímur since it was very unlikely that any of the rest of the staff would be there that day. We would introduce him to Fabían, the witness, and get him to write a confession. We assumed that it might be necessary to threaten him, and for that purpose hid a knife inside my candlestick, one of the two that were going to the embassy. It’s mostly hollow and there was ample space in there for a knife like that. I sealed it in with plaster of paris, but it was easy to break—you only needed to bang the candlestick on a hard object of some kind.”

  “But then Arngrímur didn’t show up,” Birkir said.

  “No, he didn’t show up. Everything had gone according to plan until the reading started. I asked the ambassador about the counselor I was supposed to meet with, but Konrad said he’d been unexpectedly called to Stuttgart because of an accident there. As a result Konrad would hold the meeting with me himself. What a letdown. All that preparation and effort for nothing. We weren’t going to get our hands on Arngrímur that day.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “Well, Jón recited his poetry, and we played our parts as if nothing had happened. Afterward the ambassador took us across to the Icelandic building and we had a party. Then this strange man, Anton Eiríksson, suddenly showed up. Jón and Starkadur were feeling a certain sense of anticlimax, and they decided to get drunk on the booze the embassy provided. Jón threw himself into reciting poems, and the ambassador had a ball—he ordered food for us and we stayed there well into the night, as you know.”

  “But who killed Anton? Who knew about the knife?”

  “I have no idea who killed Anton. We all knew about the knife.”

  “David as well?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Lúdvík?”

  “Yes. Lúdvík was supposed to be on hand to intimidate Arngrímur if necessary. He knows about that kind of thing. He used to be a heavy for the loan sharks for many years. He knows how to spook a guy.”

  “Why was he included in the gang?”

  “He was a kind of mercenary. He does most anything for money, and Jón was going to pay him well.”

  “Doesn’t that make him the most likely person to have murdered Anton?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “The rest of you had no idea what he was doing during the hour he was supposed to have been sick in the restroom. He could have gone up to the fourth floor at any time during that period. Isn’t that so?”

  “We were in the conference room. We didn’t observe anybody’s movements outside the room.”

  “So Lúdvík has no alibi?”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “Where can I find him?”

  “I think he’s still abroad.”

  “No, he’s not. Where does he live?”

  “He lives with a woman up in the Mosfell suburbs. The address must be in the National Register.”

  18:00

  Back outside, Birkir called Dóra, who agreed to come pick him up right away. She was in the apartment building at Austurbrún, talking with any tenants she could find at home—but that could wait.

  Birkir called Magnús. “I must have a meeting with you now,” he said when his superior finally answered. “The Sandgil fire is still in the picture. I’ve come across information that conflicts with your testimony. We need to get to the bottom of this.”

  “I’m just driving Gunnar home,” Magnús said. “I’ll meet you at my place afterward, same as yesterday.”

  “Bring Gunnar with you, he needs to be in on this. I can take him home later.”

  Birkir heard Magnús exchange words with Gunnar before replying, “OK. Gunnar’s coming with me. I’ll see you at home.”

  It was a full fifteen minutes before Dóra arrived in her car. Birkir got in.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” she said. “As I was leaving, I met the guy who lives in the apartment directly beneath Anton’s. He said he heard drilling off and on over a period of two days. Not continuously, though, and not in the evenings.”

  “Did he see anybody?”

  “No, but Anna seemed to have found something interesting. She went two hours without a smoke while she was investigating it, or so I was told.”

  “Any idea what?”

  “Footprints, or something.”

  “Oh, just footprints,” Birkir said, disappointed. That might or might not be relevant, he thought.

  “It’s something to work with,” Dóra said.

  Birkir asked her to drive to Magnús’s home.

  “This case is turning into something very strange,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  For a long time, Birkir did not reply. Finally he said, “Let’s hear what Magnús has to say.”

  In the driveway next to the house, Magnús’s Land Cruiser
was parked in the shade.

  “Come in with me,” Birkir said to Dóra. “You need to be a party to this meeting.”

  They walked up to the house and Birkir rang the doorbell. Nobody came to the door; there was no sign of life inside the house, no lights visible.

  “They must be in there,” Birkir said. He called Magnús’s cell but got the automatic response saying it was either switched off or out of range. He tried Gunnar’s, which rang until voice mail offered him the option of leaving a message.

  “What’s Gunnar’s ringtone?” Dóra asked.

  “He keeps on changing it,” Birkir said. “Last I heard, it was a referee’s whistle.”

  “I’m sure I just heard a sound like that,” Dóra said. “Call the number again.”

  Birkir did, and Dóra pointed to the driveway. They followed the faint sound past the house and around the corner toward Magnús’s car. The trilling of the phone grew louder as they approached.

  “There’s someone in the passenger seat,” Dóra said.

  Birkir opened the front passenger door to find Gunnar sitting there gasping for breath, both hands scrabbling at his neck, which someone had bound with heavy-duty packing tape to the headrest behind him. Gunnar was trying to pull at the tape with his pudgy fingers to relieve the pressure on his throat. The still-ringing cell phone lay on the floor behind the seat.

  “I have scissors in my bag,” Dóra said calmly, pushing Birkir aside. She fished out a pair of delicate nail scissors and carefully cut through the tape, which Gunnar immediately tore away from his neck. He then leaned forward, puffing like a whale.

  “Where’s Magnús?” Birkir asked.

  “They . . . they . . . got him,” Gunnar gasped.

  Birkir was on the phone already, calling for help.

  “They who?” he asked, as soon as he’d confirmed that an ambulance was on the way.

  “I . . . I . . . don’t know.”

  “Is your neck hurt?”

  “I don’t know. It’s difficult to breathe.”

  After a while his breathing settled. “It’s getting a bit better,” he said. “But it still feels like I have a lump in my throat.”

  “We’ll get you checked out.”

  Gunnar’s head drooped. “I was so goddamned scared,” he whispered. “I thought they were going to strangle me.”

  “What happened?”

  “They jumped into the seats behind us the moment Magnús pulled in. They grabbed the seat belts and pulled them tight around our necks.”

  “How many?”

  “I only saw three.”

  “Did you try to fight back?”

  Gunnar found it difficult to talk. “My back and ribs were already killing me,” he whispered. “There was nothing I could do. I gave up immediately, and they tied me up like this with the tape. But Magnús fought as best he could. I think he eventually passed out because they kept pulling so hard on the belt around his neck. Then they taped his hands and feet. He looked totally limp when they dragged him out of the car.”

  “Did you see their faces?”

  “They wore wool hats and some kind of cloth covering their faces. I couldn’t see them properly.”

  “Could it have been Jón the Sun Poet and Lúdvík?”

  “I don’t know. At least one of them was big, like Jón. Why would they do this?”

  “They think Magnús lied in his evidence about the Sandgil fire. Same with Arngrímur Ingason. They’re probably going to try to force them to confess it was Arngrímur who caused the fire.”

  Gunnar looked at Birkir. “This has turned into a disaster,” he said. “You need to contact the chief of police.”

  20:30

  At headquarters, pandemonium broke out over the news that the superintendent had been kidnapped, and that the same gang had probably also taken another man. The word terrorism was bandied about. Birkir had to detail his business with Magnús from that evening and explain the connection with the events at Sandgil. After much discussion, the consensus was that Jón the Sun Poet was top of the list of suspects. They needed to search his home, and Birkir asked that he and Dóra perform that task. Everyone agreed, provided that a SWAT team accompanied them; the police administration was worried there might be violence. Another group was sent to visit Lúdvík Bjarnason in Mosfell.

  Birkir and Dóra headed over to Jónshús with a seven-man SWAT unit. Two special officers went to cover the back of the house, and two took up positions watching the front. The others approached the front door. “Shall we break it down?” the unit leader asked.

  “Let’s give them two minutes to answer the door,” Birkir said.

  Half a minute after Dóra rang the bell, Rakel opened the door. Dóra handed her a piece of paper and said they had a warrant to search the house.

  Rakel stepped aside without glancing at the paper. “Everybody is always welcome here,” she said, not showing any expression. “We’ve got nothing to hide in this house.”

  Birkir was the last to enter. “Who’s at home?” he asked.

  “Only me and Fabían,” Rakel said. “The other residents are having a get-together. They all went out to a restaurant.”

  “Is Jón Sváfnisson with them?”

  “No. Jón went out of town.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know what he’s doing?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know if Lúdvík Bjarnason is with him?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Is Jón somewhere with Arngrímur Ingason?”

  “I don’t know,” Rakel said. “Look. Fabían is very sick. He hasn’t been able to keep down any food. I had to give him intravenous fluids. If Jón and Lúdvík are somewhere together on some business, they’ve chosen not to get me mixed up in it. I can’t leave Fabían. I took time off from the hospital to take care of him. There’s nothing I can tell you.”

  “Why isn’t Fabían in the hospital?”

  “They can’t do any more for him than I can. He feels marginally better in his own room, where he can smoke his grass. A doctor stops by twice a week. I follow his instructions.”

  “Is it OK for me to disturb him?” Birkir asked.

  “Yes, I was sitting with him when the bell rang. He’s awake.”

  “Does he know anything about where Jón might have gone?”

  “No. Please spare him any questions about Jón,” Rakel said earnestly. “He knows less than I do, and questions would only upset him.”

  Birkir went upstairs to Fabían’s room and found the door ajar. He entered, and found Fabían sitting up in his bed, smoking and reading a book by the light of a small reading lamp. A bottle with some fluid in it hung from a bracket above the bed, and a tube connected it to a needle in his arm. Beautiful music wafted around the room. A Mozart piano concerto, Birkir guessed.

  “Good evening,” he said.

  Fabían nodded and smiled listlessly.

  “You’re reading,” Birkir said.

  Fabían showed him the book, a collection of translated short stories. “I never start a long book now,” he said. “I don’t like the idea of leaving a story half read. These days I only read short stories—very short ones, preferably. I only manage a few lines at a time.”

  “I spoke with Helgi Kárason earlier today,” Birkir said.

  “He was well, I trust?” Fabían said. Though soft, his voice was remarkably clear.

  Birkir nodded. “He told me you knew more about the fire in Sandgil than you’ve let on.”

  “I find that difficult to talk about,” Fabían said.

  “I understand. I won’t push you. Helgi told me everything I need to know, I think.”

  “That’s good. I’ve smoked too much this evening. I’m a bit high. It dulls my memory.”

  “The house is very peaceful tonight,” Birkir said.

  “It’s always peaceful here. We try to be quiet after eight o’clock. Most of us go to bed early.”

 
“Almost no one is at home tonight.”

  “They’ve all gone out.”

  “But Jón the Sun Poet isn’t with them. Do you know where he is?”

  Fabían shook his head and looked away. “Have I told you about Sun?” he asked.

  “Yes, but I wouldn’t mind hearing more.”

  Fabían looked at Birkir and said, “Sun was the loveliest person it’s been my pleasure to know during my fragile life. There was not a hint of malice in her. She was pure goodness and wished everybody well.” The words came slowly, as if he had to weigh them, one by one, before committing them to speech.

  “What did she look like?” Birkir asked when he judged that Fabían had finished.

  “What did she look like?” The question seemed to surprise Fabían. Finally he said, “It would be idle to say that she was beautiful. She had red hair and freckles, a small upturned nose, and a crooked front tooth. But her green eyes and her smile that always went straight to your heart would outshine any beauty queen’s.”

  “I hear she was a good singer.”

  “Yes, she was. It was a rather deep voice, and so musical and true that it hardly needed accompaniment. But she played her guitar, too, with a kind of innate talent. She didn’t know many chords, but they were enough for her to be able to create songs that would have done the most well-trained composers proud.”

  “People have told me that her death was more than you could cope with.”

  Fabían responded slowly, “For some unfathomable reason that child of the sun had to die, and we, her friends, have never been the same since. Why did this have to happen? What could we have done to avoid this tragedy? Those questions wake us every morning and send us to sleep every night. No one who has met such a creature and lost her so uselessly will ever recover their former self.”